The head of the Clean Energy Council, Kane Thornton, has launched a forceful attack on the pro-nuclear lobby, describing it as littered with bad faith actors, disinformation, and praying on a weakened mainstream media.
Thornton said Australia is poised to finally take advantage of its unique competitive advantage to produce low-cost, zero-emissions power that will transform the Australian economy, but the country’s ability to deliver reform and generational change is fragile and being undermined by vested interests.
“Bad faith actors are using a weakened media, praying on communities increasingly anxious about the uncertainty and tensions in the world around us to tear things down,” Thorntold said in an opening address to the Clean Energy Summit in Sydney on Tuesday.
“Vested interests are stepping up to tell their story and peppering it with mistruths and outright disinformation. They are undermining the very things that would build our nation’s future and resilience in an unstable world, to further their own short term political agenda.
”The battering ram of bad faith actors today is nuclear power. We all know it’s several times more expensive than renewables and storage and is two decades away at best.”
Thornton noted that heavily promoted nuclear technologies such as small nuclear reactors still do not exist in commercial form, and coal power in Australia would be long gone before they could be delivered, if ever they could.”
Despite this reality, we are having a national debate about nuclear power. The Australian public are being confused and misled,” Thornton said.
”Investors know nuclear is not a commercially viable option for Australia and will never be realised here. But this debate is nevertheless deeply unhelpful for Australia’s international reputation as a safe place to invest, giving a perception that Australia’s energy policy remains deeply fractious and at risk of radical U-turns from one election to another.
”If we can’t have a sensible discussion about energy policy, then our problems as a nation go far beyond balancing our energy mix. We have suffered for over 15 years through the climate wars.
”These distractions and the inaction are why power prices are higher today and the energy transition is all the harder. It’s why we are playing catchup to reform our energy markets, fix and build out the grid, train the workforce, developing the standards and practices we should expect.”
Thornton said the rooftop solar market remained strong, and the battery storage market was also robust. “It’s the energy we need to charge these batteries that needs to happen much quicker,” he said.
Thornton said he hoped that the federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme, which seeks 32 GW of new wind, solar and storage, will be one of the last “missing pieces” of the energy transition puzzle and help accelerate the rollout.
‘It needs to move quickly and deliver the investment confidence the market is seeking. If it works, we can expect a wave of large-scale renewable energy projects come forward,” he said.
“It’s doable, but it won’t be easy. “Thankfully we now have governments around the country, market bodies, industry and communities pulling in the same direction.”
But Thornton said that, given the disinformation around nuclear, the industry needed to work together to give confidence in the future of renewables.
“We need to recognise that change doesn’t always come easy. For some people it can create anxiety and uncertainty,” he said.
”They look for clarity, to people they trust. They want to understand lived experience and how new technology or projects in their community will impact their lives.”
